Be sure to include your name, daytime phone number, address, name and phone number of legal next-of-kin, method of payment, and the name of the funeral home/crematory to contact for verification of death.

Rising in defense of the lowly, um, cankerworm

Right off the top, you can start calling us by our real name, which most of you seem to think is “Ewwww!”

We’re Paleacrita vernata, which we think is an elegant title, and we’ll thank you to stop referring to us as “cankerworms.” We’re not like open, gooey sores in your mouth. We’re not even grubby, icky, slimy worms at all.

We’re moths, for heaven’s sake.

For reasons we cannot fathom, you people of Charlotte grow murderously inhospitable whenever we visit. You coo over butterflies and ladybugs like they’re “Homeland” celebrities, but treat us Pal verns like vermin. It hurts our little feelings.

What’s with those sticky bands you wrap around your tree in autumn to trap us by the fistful when we’re beetling up the trunk for our mating ritual. Have you entirely forgotten what you were like at 17? Imagine getting dressed up for the disco with more than dancing on your mind, then tumbling into a tar pit in the parking lot.

You’re lucky to have us. We give little girls something to shriek about in an increasing suburban, snakeless world. We entertain little boys with our cartoonish locomotion, inch-by-arched-back inch. We invigorate your world, and we fatten your robins.

We get a bad rap on two things: munching trees and falling on your heads.

Sure, we like our salad, but it’s not like we’re into cattle mutilation.

Most trees don’t give us a second thought. Bulldozers and billboards are their natural enemies, and they know it.

We’re completely misunderstood on the head-landings. Scientists say they think we drop by gossamer threads to catch a breeze and fly somewhere new. Give us some credit.

No, we suspend ourselves from the boughs just to land in your hair.

We wait hours for the right person. We’re seeking the ear-podded, phone-staring plodders. They are the ones Nature has assigned us to.

When we alight, they rip out the ear buds, swing their phones wildly and act like they’re alive again. It is a wonderful sight.

For that moment, the pod-zombie becomes aware that life is being reborn. That birds have returned. That the trees are a symphony hall. That the sky is awash with that special, big blue.

We must remind them that spring, that joyous season that stirs the juvenile in all of us, has rebounded.

About Mark Washburn

Editor's Choice Videos

Join the Discussion

Charlotte Observer is pleased to provide this opportunity to share information, experiences and observations about what's in the news. Some of the comments may be reprinted elsewhere on the site or in the newspaper. We encourage lively, open debate on the issues of the day, and ask that you refrain from profanity, hate speech, personal comments and remarks that are off point. Thank you for taking the time to offer your thoughts.